Patrick Killelea

C&T 491

6/11/2019

Journal Reflection #2

My first thought for this week’s journal entry is a realization that I made today while observing

Greg’s lessons today. Many student-teachers have groused about having to watch the same

lesson being taught 24 times a week, but I think there is a lot to learn about the inner-workings

of a successful lesson through repetition. From Greg’s perspective, it allows him to fix problems

that arise and improve the later lessons. Also, once the lesson has become watertight, Greg is

ready for any potential problems and has solutions ready. Finally, teaching a great lesson 24

times allows him to understand the elements of a great lesson. When I worked as an

elementary school teacher, I would prepare and teach 24 different lessons, to varying success,

and I rarely reflected because I was always thinking about the next lesson I had to teach or

prepare for.

I noticed that today’s lesson didn’t require a textbook or workbook, and I remember being told

that Greg has a lot of control over his classes’ curriculum. This control allowed him to design

two full-class fun, communicative lessons these last few weeks as a follow-up to their

presentation projects and give the students a break. In my experience as a language teacher, I

have had little or no control over the curriculum, most of which requiring that a certain amount

of textbook or workbook pages be completed every class. Requiring students to use their

textbooks every class made the classes seem predictable and left many students feeling bored

during that part of class. I feel that principals or language academy wonjangnims should hire
teachers that they can trust to make and change the curriculum. I think many teachers know

their students’ needs well and understand how to make lessons that suit their needs.

A final reflection that I have from the past month and half of teaching is to emphasize that

students speak English in class. I have never installed this policy because I feel that it takes a lot

of energy to enforce this on a daily basis and takes away from the lesson. I become more of a

police officer than a teacher. But, I recently substitute taught for two weeks at a language

academy where their school policy for most students was to speak only English in class. All

teachers followed these rules and I was surprised to hear students asking me in English if they

could say something in Korean. The students could actually do all types of communication in

English, even chatting with their partner. So, when I observed Greg’s lesson, all of the students

were discussing the answers to the riddles in Korean, and I taught they were old enough and

skilled enough to do it in English. The classroom time with the native teacher is extremely

limited (only 50 minutes per week) and precious and I feel that Greg should maximize this time.

Finally a few questions to wrap up this week’s journal entry about SIOP lesson plans:

1) How can form and function be taught with lessons about slang, and how would that

connect to ESL teaching standards. Would it be communicative standards?

2) Some communicative lessons are open-ended and allow students a great deal of

flexibility to ad-lib and role play. I wonder how less-structured lessons are done using

the SIOP lesson plan format where1 form is important.